The Kogi State government has taken giant steps aimed at boosting production of rice in the country, to drive the transformation agenda of the Federal Government in the area of agriculture.
The state has already embarked on rigorous rice cultivation to ensure sustainable production and storage to reduce monies wasted on the importation of rice on daily basis.
The state governor, Captain Idris Wada noted that the initiative was prompted by the flooding that ravaged the state and the fact that agriculture is the shortest route to wealth.
“When the minister said at the National Economic Council that Nigeria imports one billion naira worth of rice in a day, I was taken aback. We all eat rice, but we don’t know the quantum of money that this country is losing every day by the rice which we don’t produce.
So, these were things that motivated me to look at how we can contribute to rice production,” he stated.
He noted that if the state focus on agriculture, apart from providing individual wealth, providing cheap food for the nation, the state by the model it is implementing would be able to generate income, to augment what it gets from the federation account for the development of the state.
“I directed the leadership of each local government to clear 250 hectares of land. We started by asking them to do an hundred. We were
impressed by what they were doing, and we increased it to 250. And we challenged them that any local government that is able to clear 250 hectares, the state will fund another 250, making 500 hectares.
“Our people are willingly providing the land. We are acquiring a straightforward system. We pay compensation, we bring land-clearing equipment, clear the land and then we give it to the smallholders to cultivate. We give them the inputs and then we guide them towards harvest. So far, it is working in all the local governments,” he stated.
The governor stressed that the state has transformed all the flood-prone areas in the nine local governments to beautify it and turn the damage and destruction of those areas into wealth through rice cultivation.
Wada emphasised that the state is planning to buy additional earth-moving and land-clearing equipment, progress into mechanisation and has imported 10 containers of motorised agricultural equipment from China, waiting for the Chinese manufacturers to teach the people on how to assemble them.
He disclosed that on the issue of processing of rice, his immediate concern was storage but after speaking with the minister of Agriculture about using some of the silos in the state, he consented to the usage, while the state is addressing the issue of processing.
“In the matter of processing, we are lucky that immediately after the flood, the Korean government through their Korean Development Agency, donated five semi-automatic rice mills to Kogi State. We are in the process of installing these mills at strategic locations in the rice growing areas of Kogi State,” he declared.
